I felt that the matter was too touchy to not expound upon and qualify each short statement that I would make in a twitter conversation explaining my opinion, but I ended up voicing said opinion on twitter, this morning, with the encouragement of the very personalities who’s disappointment I feared. So, before I throw in my two cents, a big thank you goes out to @GeekGirlDiva and @Kiala who both wrote posts on Vanity Fair’s article and who both kindly read my tweets as a fellow twitter user rather than some guy unconscious of his own saturated sexism who just doesn’t get it.

Vanity Fair’s article on “tweethearts” should not have been printed. As @Kiala mentioned, there are just too many editors to let something like this pass. Shame on them for thinking they could capitalize on their ignorance. What do I mean?

RULE #1: Do NOT write about anything you don’t know about. If you don’t know anything about a subject you wish to write about, research it. Vanity Fair crashed, burned, and killed several kittens with their attempt at research, as per the article this comment is hosted on.

RULE #2: Do NOT attempt to ostracize a group of people in the know of something you are not. So what if you don’t know anything about twitter, Vanity Fair? Do you honestly think that attempting to appeal with your non-twitter using readers by dividing all your readers into factions would help to sell your product? Even without census data, logical reasoning will clue you in that if you are having to publish articles online, you are going to have internet users reading your articles. What do the vast majority of people use the internet for, nowadays? Social media. What’s one extremely popular form of social media that influences millions of people through internet, radio and television? Twitter. (If you don’t believe me about the TV and radio thing, just watch Fox News, CNN or ABC, sometime). So, write something bad about twitter and it will likely be spread across the world in minutes.

Now, it is true that campaign marketing through negative, but global comments is a way to get brand recognition and possibly more sales, but it’s not likely. In a time when customers are pickier than ever (b/c of $), they will not grab an issue because “I heard something about this on the news.” Customers will avoid products because “I heard something about this on the news.”

Where Vanity Fair really screwed the pooch, though, is that they didn’t just attempt to ostracize twitter users from their readers, they tried to ostracize entrepreneurs and women.

To be fair, I can see how a person who dislikes twitter could unconsciously make twitter users seem ditzy or stupid, but publications have a way to catch that. It’s called an editor. So, whether intentional or not, Vanity Fair has made it’s official position through a printed article that cannot be revoked or modified that it has less respect for twitter users than the average reader, that persons famous on twitter are not ACTUALLY famous, and that persons deriving any sort of entrepreneurial success through twitter did not work for it.

Some people may be thinking, “but they didn’t come out and say all that. They just made a few bad analogies.” That’s what I thought, initially. The thing is, this is a publication made in hard-print. It’s unchangeable typography printed upon something people hold with their hands and can frame and can hand to others and that is forever because someone else somewhere has a copy in their hands. Until very recently, all publications knew this, so they hired writers, people who have degrees in journalism, to write and research to the best of their abilities to produce the best articles for that particular publication. This holds printed media to a higher standard than, say, a blog. So, the general reasoning is that if something is implied in an article that’s printed, it was intentionally put there by a professional writer and an editor (or several editors) approved it.

Recent shifts in public media consumption, however, has left printed media in the cold. Vanity Fair’s position during such tough times is, obviously, to not care as much about it’s writing and to produce lower quality columns than it ever has. Bravo. You’ve shot yourself in the face, VF, and managed to make the rest of printed media look worse for it by comparison.

Don’t you understand that we internet bloggers and twitter users wish we could be you? We wish we could be sitting at a desk typing away articles for a printed publication, snapping pictures of famous persons, and travelling to locations for interviews with the people who matter to the world? Don’t kill the industry, and don’t mock us. Just leave.